Transparency
by lirance
Summary: “So this was the shape of things to come, the space between the void and the sun". They burn brighter than the dawn together, and Sanzo doesn't know how he feels about that. 3x5x8 threesome, San x Goj x Hakk.
1. Cigarette Smoke

_31-03-08 Transparency 3x5x8 slash, SanxGojxHakk  
_

So this was how it was to be.

Sanzo fumbled into his pocket and drew out a box of cigarettes. Tearing away the cellophane with fast, clumsy movements, he flicked up the lid, pulled one out, and lit it.

So this was the shape of things to come.

Well, he couldn't say that he was _entirely_ surprised. Hakkai and Gojyo had always been closer than he had ever imagined, closer than brothers, for brothers fight and curse and rage, closer than anything. There had been dreams and secrets and wonders between them that he had never known of.

He shouldn't feel hurt. He didn't need anyone. At all. _Bound by nothing_. And that wasn't desire curling hot and heavy and sickly between his legs, it couldn't be, because he didn't feel lust. He didn't. Sanzo crossed his knees and took another drag.

In his heart, there was a terrible isolation. Why had he even started to think about this? Goku was just a child, and Gojyo and Hakkai only wanted one another lately. Another drag of the cigarette, and his lungs felt hot and full of dust. When he had seen them kissing, he had had to go into the bathroom and lock the door and bite his knuckles until the feeling passed. It wasn't entirely down to lust.

But why should they want him? It was an unfamiliar thought, one that stung with unexpected sharpness. Sanzo was not accustomed to self-introspection. They were probably better without him. He was sour-tempered, horribly violent and wildly bipolar, flashing from frustration and irritability to blind rage. It was not something that he liked to confess to. Humiliation burned in his face even as he ground out the cigarette, and crossed his legs further. This was supposed to make him feel worse, supposed to crush the curling warmth in his loins, but it _wasn't working_, and he could still hear Hakkai _moaning_.

The night air was cold and clear. Sanzo shoved the box back into his pocket, pulled his robe up over his shoulders, and slowly rose to his feet. The monkey was off elsewhere, probably buying meat buns. He could afford to leave for a short while. Hakkai and Gojyo wouldn't notice.

The trees cast deep, still shadows across the worn concrete pavement. Sanzo pushed his hands into his sleeves as he walked, wondering absently if the mercy bitch was watching him, somewhere. He didn't really care. Screw her.

(Although admittedly, the thought of her watching him in the shower or something bothered him quite a bit, but he tried to cast that aside. Couldn't let her get to him.)

"Genjyo Sanzo! Prepare to die!"

Pathetic. Face twisting into a snarl, Sanzo wrenched the gun from his sleeve and fired off a shot into the shadows. There was a short, barking laugh, and then silence. That never boded well. Drawing shallow breaths, he tried to listen. The soft rustle of the wind. Music, from some distant house, and a child crying. A scuffle-

He snapped the trigger back once, twice, but it wasn't quite fast enough. The youkai raked his shoulder with pale claws before he could twist away, although Sanzo noted with some satisfaction that it was also bleeding. Then…

It disappeared.

Sanzo squinted into the darkness, blinking. His night vision was clear, but he could see nothing but the shadows of the trees and the long grass. He stepped back into the lamplight, listening again. The buzz of the flickering streetlight. A dog, howling at the moon. He could feel the hard, soaking pain of the wounds in his shoulder, the warm dribble of the blood dripping down his arm. He had to focus.

He waited twenty minutes, the barrel of the gun cold between his sweating hands. Clouds drifted across the pale moon. Someone turned the music off. A stray cat, licking at the litter. Something, a youkai, lying prone in the darkness, fading through to blackened dust.

Cursing under his breath, sharp guttural syllables, Sanzo began to walk back to the hotel. His shoulder ached. Blood had dripped onto his sandal, and his foot now slid against it with every step. He could feel a blister slowly forming, but did not dare to stop and wipe it away. Finally, the dark, non-descript shape of the hotel, the flicker of the yellow lights in the hallway, Goku's face.

"Sanzo!"

Sanzo set the gun down on his bedside table with a clank and did not bother to reply as he headed for the bathroom. He had not eaten much at dinner, and his stomach rattled. Hadn't really felt like it, not when he saw Gojyo's tongue wrapping around the chopsticks, red on white, and Hakkai smiling.

The pipes clanked as he turned the shower on, plastic dropping from the cracked ceiling, but the water was hot and clear as he stepped underneath the head and turned his face upwards. Would there be bullet holes in the walls at dawn, and cracked glass in the sunlight? Sometimes, he just wanted one night where he could lay his head down and not have to worry about damage bills at breakfast.

When he stepped out, wrapping the towel around his waist, Hakkai was waiting in the doorway, the medical bag in his hand.

"Sanzo."

It was not a greeting.

Sanzo almost sat down obediently, but his shoulder sang with pain, and his heart ached, and heat rose through his hips, and he managed a snarl.

"Get out."

Hakkai smiled thinly. "I understand what you are feeling, Sanzo-"

Sanzo felt pale and cold as ice for a moment, almost transparent.

"-But we cannot afford to let your wound become infected."

'We'. The collective. As if it was anyone but Sanzo's choice. The monk pushed past Hakkai and sat down on one of the beds in the room beyond, reaching for another cigarette from his pocket. The lighter was bright and cool in his hand. He was running low on fuel, and the tiny flame was barely hot enough to snap sensation through his fingers.

Hakkai set a hand down his shoulder. Blood bubbled up. Before Sanzo could gasp a curse, the youkai stripped down his robe and began to tear open saline packets. The pain was so sour and sudden that Sanzo was still reeling when Hakkai began to clean the wound. Bastard.

Soon, a stiff white bandage was fastened to his shoulder. Sanzo sucked at his cigarette moodily and refused to look at Hakkai as the youkai packed away the medical supplies. Probably still too tired for any _chi_ healing. He wondered if Gojyo was sleeping.

"You worried Goku, you know." Hakkai's voice was low and cool.

"Hn."

"What were you thinking, to just wander off without telling any of us?"

A brief moment of silence. Sanzo smashed the cigarette butt down into the ashtray and watched the ebbs of smoke curl. "What's it to you?" _You were busy._

Hakkai leaned in closer, and Sanzo instinctively moved back. The warmth between his thighs was bright and made him feel as though the youkai could stare straight through the rough fabric of the pale towel.

"Back the hell off."

"You have been really very irritable lately. You're worrying all of us. It's not nice to make people worry, you know."

"Whatever you say."

Hakkai's eyes narrowed, and he moved in even closer, until Sanzo could smell the bitterness on his breath. Before he could think, his hands were moving, and the youkai was sitting hard on the floor, expression distraught.

"Sanzo!"

He had never hit Hakkai before. The thought numbed him, even as he turned his face to the wall.

"…Is this about me and Gojyo? Because really, we don't want to-"

Sanzo snapped back the safety catch on his gun.

The door cracked open sharply, and Gojyo peered inside, grinning sheepishly. "Sorry, these doors are kinda- what the hell? _Sanzo!_"

The gun was hard and heavy in his hands, and Sanzo knew that when he put it down, the taste of metal would still linger on his fingers. The sweat shivering down the back of his neck stung, and suddenly, he just didn't care any more. He threw the gun down onto the carpet and stared up at Gojyo with an unreadable expression.

"Happy now, kappa?"

And suddenly, they were both far too close, Gojyo angry and bright and tense, Hakkai frustrated and cold and weary.

Sanzo was about to _makai tenjou_ them both when Hakkai leaned in near and cool and kissed him sharply on the mouth. The monk felt the hotel and the town and the desert and all of China abruptly fall away as Gojyo's large hands tangled in his hair, and all three of them were lying on the bed together, and it was far too hot and-

Later, with Gojyo's face buried in his neck and Hakkai's arm across his waist, Sanzo finally permitted himself a smile.


	2. Dusty Fireflies

_01-04-08 Dusty Fireflies 3x5x8 SanxGojxHakk  
_

They fit together well, Sanzo mused, biting plastic wrapping from a cigarette and tasting nicotine and cardboard between his lips.

Gojyo was too bright and impulsive and wrapped up in blinding emotion, all action and word and rarely thought. Light and motion, like the play of lanterns on a screen, too swift to follow, darting like a firefly's muse.

Hakkai was too melancholy, the secret locked in the dusted box, ever looking over his shoulder, all sad sweet smiles and hidden thoughts. Sanzo never understand what passed underneath that curtain, and he wasn't so certain that he wanted to know.

Sanzo…Sanzo was the river, deep and cold and clear, with bitterness in its currents for those who delved too deep, or perhaps not deeply enough. The coldness of snow in its undertow, and dark shapes along the rocky bed. It was not a place where the light-hearted swam, or looked for bright pebbles.

And sometimes, Sanzo wondered if he was really needed, really wanted, or whether he was just another part of the journey, another passing fancy to savour and note down in the mildewed pages of an old diary. Maybe he would become words in a book, memories in a drawer, and Gojyo and Hakkai would pass into the sunset- together.

In twenty years' time, would they remember that he liked Marlboro cigarettes and pickled ginger and broadsheet newspapers, or would it be a half-forgotten remembrance, something bitten back in the shape before words?

The three of them fit together well, but Gojyo and Hakkai fitted even better as a pair.

Quiet recollections and mah-jongg in the twilight, Oolong tea and crumpled zinc beer cans amongst the dinner dishes. That was what entered his head when he thought of the two of them together.

Sanzo put his feet up on the empty table and opened out his newspaper. There was a crossword. He found a pen in one of the bags and licked the tip until ink welled through.

Sometimes, he heard them talking in the minutes before dawn, his part of the bed cool and crisp as they huddled together on the other side and murmured in soft, secretive voices, and he was left to stare up at the ceiling and wonder when the sun would break the night.

When Hakkai came in quietly, laying shopping bags down with the rustle of plastic, Sanzo said softly, "What do you and Gojyo talk about?"

"What?" Hakkai pushed his monocle further down his nose and opened another bag. "What do you mean, Sanzo?"

"When you think that I'm asleep."

The rattling stopped for a heartbeat, and Hakkai straightened. "-Nothing. Just-" He shrugged. "The journey. Places. People."

"I see." Sanzo held the paper out flat and crossed off a clue. A packet of cigarettes tumbled onto the empty table by his feet. He wondered if it was a gesture. Maybe he read too much into actions because he said so little himself.

"I am deeply sorry if you feel-"

"Forget it." Because really, if Hakkai was going to speak in that measured, impersonal, achingly _polite_ tone, he could just forget the whole damn conversation.

Sighing, Hakkai rolled up the last plastic bag and pulled out a chair beside him. "Sanzo, what's this about? You know that we don't keep anything from you-"

"Don't you?" Sanzo wrote in the final clue.

They needed Gojyo here, the third part of the triangle, for his anger and light and exuberance, because this conversation felt as cold and brittle as frost, and right at that moment in the universe, the door opened.

"Gojyo!" Hakkai's relief was palpable, and warm.

Sanzo turned to the sudoku. He should have learnt his lesson. In this life, you took warmth where you could, and then you moved on. That was it. Nothing was permanent, nothing was real, nothing could truly bind you.

The other two had been whispering with soft heat, and Gojyo now turned to Sanzo, one hand clenched on his hip.

"You think you're just another phase, monk? That this is just some damn pastime, and you're the fool stuck in between? That what you think?"

Sanzo hated it when anyone stepped so close, like they were reaching into his soul, everything abruptly nauseating and frustrating and invasive. He didn't respond, and with a sudden, hard movement, Gojyo stepped closer and wrenched the newspaper from his hands.

"For fuck's sake! You just hide behind your newspaper like normal, why don't you? As if what's going in someone else's damn life is more important than all of this. Why do you have to keep on pushing away? You treat the- this like it's a game."

Maybe it was. Sanzo wasn't sure that he really understood love and sex. Perhaps he had the wrong rulebook for this game. He didn't know where the lines were, or had been.

"I don't know," Sanzo said honestly. _I don't know why I read about other peoples' lives to escape my own, or push you away, or look at the wrong fucking rulebook. Maybe there never was a rulebook, and I'm just blind to it all._

Gojyo and Hakkai both sighed, almost in unison, and Sanzo felt again that sour connection between the two of them, love and trust and something else that he couldn't quite name. For once, he was the outsider, looking in through the frosted window.

Later that night, he put his head on Gojyo's shoulder and felt Hakkai's arm cross his waist, and it was almost a mutual apology, but not quite.

"I understand what you're feeling," Gojyo said softly, heavily. "I don't like it, but I can understand it."

Sanzo bit his neck.

"Sanzo-"

"Are you ever going to use my _fucking_ name?"

"What?" Hakkai sounded tired and confused.

Gojyo smiled into the back of Sanzo's neck. "Genjo."

It sounded good in his mouth as Sanzo twisted round and kissed the last of the fading sound from his lips. He could hear Hakkai laughing quietly, and kicked him under the bedcovers. They lay down together as the dawn broke through the shadowed night and rinsed the room in pale gold.


End file.
